Obviously a discriminating critic (possibly a saint), Steven Beattie writes and curates That Shakespearean Rag where he has just published this appreciation of my short story “The Obituary Writer” from which, coincidentally, the name Numéro Cinq is taken (you can read about that in the About page underneath the testimonials). The story is from my book A Guide to Animal Behaviour.

dg

Glover, one of the great unsung story writers this country has ever produced, tips his hand with the epigraph, from Philippe-Paul de Ségur, an aide-de-camp to Napoleon during the disastrous French invasion of Russia: “We drifted along in this empire of death like accursed phantoms.” Glover’s story locates itself in an “empire of death,” in which the inhabitants do, for the most part, drift along like accursed phantoms, not cognizant of their essential mutability and ephemerality.

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The management wishes to acknowledge the financial support of Douglas "Deep-Pockets" Glover and no one else.